


Point Blank Range

by CobaltStargazer



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Anger, F/M, Tension, mentions of drug addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 10:50:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,442
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4345682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CobaltStargazer/pseuds/CobaltStargazer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clearing the air is so important.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Point Blank Range

There was a woman sitting at Emily's desk when JJ showed up at the office. She'd arrived before everyone else, coming in early to prepare to present a case, and she recognized Elle Greenaway as she entered the bullpen, her steps slowed from a brisk walk to a slow one, and then she paused before clearing her throat.

"Reid's not here. He should come in soon, though."

"Yeah, I know. I figure he's dealing with enough, he doesn't need to be here for this."

The brunette's voice was even when she spoke, almost flat, but her shoulders were tight with aggravation. She and JJ had never been close during her brief time with the BAU. Their personalities hadn't meshed, and neither of them had really made the effort to be more than polite co-workers. Hotch was a different matter, and she'd get to him soon enough.

"She looks good for a woman who's supposed to have been dead for six months or so, doesn't she?"

There was a picture of Emily Prentiss on the corner of her desk, standing with an older woman who bore a striking resemblance to the brunette, and Elle studied the photograph as she drank coffee from her travel mug. Probably the mother, the likeness was strong enough for it. She could feel JJ hovering close by, and the chair swiveled once she'd nudged the framed picture back into place. They looked at each other for a silent two minutes, and JJ finally closed the distance, stiffening her posture as she put a few files on her desk.

"It was the only choice there was. If Doyle had known she was alive, he wouldn't have stopped trying to finish the job. We didn't tell because we couldn't."

"I don't care about your reasons," Elle said. "I get why you did it, but that doesn't change the fact that Reid sounded like he was calling me from the rings of Saturn. And that its 'we' instead of 'I' means it was only half a secret."

JJ did actually feel terrible about the whole thing, but she could also get defensive when confronted. That she and Elle hadn't bonded when they'd worked together meant that there was no buffer, no safety net of a pre-existing friendship.

"When did you know?"

"When she survived the surgery. They operated on her for six hours. When the surgeon told me she was still alive, I told Hotch."

"And the two of you put your heads together and, what, cooked up this plan to let her pull a Jason Bourne?"

"It wasn't like that," the blonde protested, reluctantly turning to face the other woman, who was still seated. "We lost track of Ian Doyle. He disappeared, went off the grid, and if it had been known that Emily was still alive..."

"You said that already," Elle said sharply, waving the words away. The silence held, tight with tension, and the brunette broke it by saying, "If it hadn't been for Declan, if Prentiss hadn't had to come out of hiding to keep the kid from being taken God knows where, would you have _ever_ said anything? You or Hotch, either one of you?"

Because Spencer had explained about the kid when he'd picked her up, told her the rest of it while they sat in his kitchen. Well, while she sat and he did almost everything except sit. Elle had slept on the couch instead of in the bed, wanting to give him room rather than do what she really would have liked to do - wrap herself around him, preferably naked, and chase the hurt away. And she'd slipped out alone deliberately. Spencer didn't need her to fight his battles for him, but she was insulted on his behalf. Insulted enough that she'd showed up without really considering what she'd say. But what she'd just asked had kept her awake when she'd tried to go to sleep the night before. If the lie would have gone on indefinitely.

The blonde opened her mouth, then closed it. Whatever Elle's relationship with Spencer was, things were at work here that she wasn't privy to. She knew what the brunette wanted her to say, and it would have made things easier if she could just say that she would have revealed the truth without the boy's life being in jeopardy. Her shoulders lifted, a defensive shrug.

"I don't know. Maybe, maybe not. It was a really delicate situation."

"Mmm. It usually is." Elle rubbed the back of her neck, looked up at the white tiles of the ceiling. She'd decided to maybe leave the Yalie out of it. Whatever secrets Hotch and JJ had decided to keep, Prentiss' near-death was just the catalyst, not the end result. She knew exactly what it was like to nearly die at the hands of some insane bastard. Spencer's crushed feelings were her main concern, anyway.

"Would you have kept _his_ secret if he had gone back to the needle? You're so good at keeping things quiet when its delicate, and I'd say that'd be damn delicate."

"I...that's not..." 'That's not fair' stayed unsaid, because JJ took a step towards the desk, and Elle's posture tensed. "You knew?" the blonde asked, her expression narrowing. "About the drugs, you knew? He told you?"

Elle could have bitten her tongue off, because saying it had been a slip, but instead of backtracking she decided to brazen it out. "He tells me a lot of things, but yeah, he told me."

"And you didn't tell anybody." It was a statement.

The look on Elle's face sharpened until it looked as if it had been cut from a block of ice, and into the silence that followed, she said, "Don't you _even_ try to turn this around on me. I'm the one who said he should try NA, get some help. That no one here would stand for it." The chair's wheels squeaked as she got up, pushing it backwards, and she pointed upstairs, at the door to Aaron Hotchner's office. "You think they wouldn't have fired him in a heartbeat? That it would matter that some psychotic jabbed a needle into his vein knowing he didn't want it? Because he told me about that too."

And that was a source of old guilt for JJ, and she dropped her gaze from the brunette's furious stare, remembering Spencer's condition when they'd found him. If it had meant Reid's life, knowing that his addiction could resurface, would she have told him the truth about Emily? She wished she could just say yes.

"We were wrong." Her voice was low but steady, and she met Elle's eyes with a rueful expression. "I was wrong. I wanted to tell him, and I'd like to say I would have even without Declan's safety being at risk, but I can't. I hate that he's angry, but I wanted Emily to survive."

Against her will, Elle's posture relaxed, and she blew out a breath. "I told him that being pissed is healthy," she informed the blonde. "Like I said, I know why you did it, but you're gonna have to leave him be until he's not pissed off anymore. If you care about him, if you respect him, you'll let him be mad. He's not a kid. He's probably never fully been a kid."

The brunette's expression had softened while she talked, and JJ wondered again where Elle fit into all this. Reid had said she'd left the area, moving to Texas to take a job for a bail bondsman or something. One fair eyebrow quirked, and the former profiler noticed.

"What?"

"Just wondering....what you're going to say to Hotch."

JJ had been about to say something else, Elle was pretty sure, but she let it slide. Instead, she directed her gaze up the stairs from the lower level of the bullpen, and her expression narrowed again. She and Hotch _had_ bonded before she'd been shot, but there were words to be said. The closed door of his office was both familiar and not. She chuffed into the quiet.

"Oh, you don't need to concern yourself with that," she said in a musing voice. "That'll be between him and me."

"Should I warn him?" The two women looked at each other, and Elle snorted out a laugh. 

"You can if you want. If he's still as smart as he used to be, he'll expect me."

They parted company after that, and JJ thought about Elle's words for the rest of the day, among other things. Maybe she _would_ warn her boss. To start breaking the habit of keeping secrets.


End file.
